T-Brick Shed: Rafters and Decking

July 24, 2016
Natural Building, T-Brick Shed
This weekend we attached the rafters, fascia boards and installed the decking. It’s beginning to look very roof like.

Cutting a short rafter to install on the pony wall. Sure is nice to have a shady work space.

Installing the short rafter on the pony wall.

All rafters are attached apart from ones on either outside edge (flying rafters).

I was working solo on Friday so to get the outside rafters on I made a couple of holders from some scrap wood and attached them to the outriggers. 

Attaching the flying rafter to the outriggers

Installing the flying rafter on the other side.

After attaching the flying rafters, I installed some blocking between the outriggers and put way more screws than I probably needed into the rafters to see they were securely fastened to the bond beam/top plate.

On Saturday we put fascia boards on the front and back.

Unloading plywood for the decking. It’s good to keep those old people active.

Using the ladder as ramp to push to plywood up on to the roof.
Cutting a sheet of plywood in half to finish off the third row. It’s useful to think about your building materials when making your design. I got lucky. The shed is 16′ long by 10′ wide. On the long side there’s 2′ of roof overhang on each side making the roof 20′ long. On the short side, there’s a little less than 3′ feet of  roof overhang on each side making the roof 16′ wide. A sheet of plywood is 8′ long by 4′ wide which (if you do a little math) figure out works great for covering a 20′ by 16′ space. I only had to halve two of the sheets and didn’t have any waste. 

Finishing the third row.
Another lucky break. Earth acts like a thermal battery. A cob wall will absorb warmth or coolth and eventually radiate it inside. So, to stay cool in the summer when the sun is high in the sky you want your southern facing roof face to have a good sized eave to block the sun from the hitting the wall at all. This is late July at approximately 1 pm. I’ll keep an eye out to see when the sun is low enough to start hitting the wall.

I thought the long eaves might block out light for the bottle wall but it looks good to me. We’re going to screen in the back pony wall so there should be plenty of natural light inside.

Decking finished.